There will be much fretting in the coming days about
potential longterm effects of the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on
Wednesday to lift certain limits on political contributions in elections for
Congress. The fear-based discussion is not unexpected, as the federal
government has for years worried that big money could rig elections and, thus,
public policy – and any expansion of campaign spending by wealthy individuals could
be seen as running fairness right out of the building.

But fear obscures a key point: Democracy needs no
nanny. Indeed, a robust democracy depends upon the free choice of each of its
members to declare and underwrite support to any number of political candidates
and causes – without the interference of a nanny to police and modulate representation.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. hit the nail squarely on the head in the
court's majority opinion when he wrote, somewhat bitingly: "The government may
no more restrict how many candidates or causes a donor may support than it may
tell a newspaper how many candidates it may endorse." Ahem.

It's a matter of free speech. The case was brought
by a wealthy Alabama businessman who gives money to political candidates and
committees but felt clipped by federal laws limiting how much he could give in
any given election cycle. He was joined in challenging federal campaign finance
laws, birthed following the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s, by the
Republican National Committee. And his First Amendment argument carried the
day: The court, while leaving in place a $2,600-per-candidate contribution
limit, struck down aggregate limits of what an individual could contribute to
candidates and political committees, making limitless the number of candidates
and committees a citizen might now be free to support. That means, yes, that Seattle-based
Bill Gates could, say, put money into hundreds of a party's House candidates
and dozens of its Senate candidates nationally, causing everyone to worry that
he was attempting to hardwire the Congress for his own profit.

But even that scenario, while fantastic, wouldn't be
a threat as long as Gates were tracked in his spending and all beneficiary
officeholders publicly held to account for their votes. Such practices are in
place and unthreatened by the high court's ruling. Check-writing would in this
scenario simply be an expression of free speech. And to that, Roberts correctly
wrote: "Money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some, but so too does
much of what the First Amendment vigorously protects. If the First Amendment
protects flag-burning, funeral protests and Nazi parades – despite the profound
offense such spectacles cause – it surely protects political campaign speech
despite popular opposition."

Oregon already is ahead of the curve. The
Oregonian's Jeff Mapes reported it is one of only 12 states with no limits on
the size of political donations to its statehouse candidates, whether for
governor or legislator. But the high court's decision could change the
landscape in that Oregon congressional campaigns may now aggressively solicit
big donors in wealthy, big-donor centers such as Los Angeles and New York. Meanwhile
the court's decision could boost the financial strength of political parties,
which, The Washington Post on Wednesday reported, "have lost their dominance
with the rise of super PACs and other independent political groups that can
raise unlimited sums."

Safeguards against outright political
corruption remain in place in federal law. The court's narrow decision this
week simply restores faith that individual preferences must be honored – and
that the health of the country is delivered by unbridled democracy rather than
freeze-dried metrics that regulate participation in it.